MILPITAS -- Bay Area lottery fans knew it was destined to happen: Lightning strikes twice, they insisted, brushing aside the odds. So they streamed into the East San Jose gift shop that sold a winning MegaMillions ticket in December, searching for their own luck.

Turns out they were right, sort of. The second stroke of fortune hit the ground Wednesday night 13 miles away at a Dixon Landing Road service station, which sold a sole winning $425 million Powerball ticket to an as-yet-unknown player.

Two wins in such a short period of time means Santa Clara County just hit a 1-in-75,000 long shot.

Which brings up the question: What are the chances of a third time being as charmed?

Hilfonso Starling says bet on it -- that's what he's doing. Starling stopped Thursday afternoon at the Chevron gas station where the Powerball ticket was sold, said the two jackpots are "living proof" there's a lucky streak going on in Silicon Valley.

But some mathematicians on Thursday said hold your horses, lottery prospectors. That sort of thinking is just another type of Fool's Gold.

Lottery players, like any habitual gamblers, now will buy more tickets in Santa Clara County because they believe they've spotted a pattern that doesn't really exist, said Mark Nichols, a University of Nevada-Reno economics professor.

"It's called the Gambler's Fallacy," said Nichols, part of the university's Institute of Gambling and Professional Gaming. "Some gamblers will play a slot machine because they think it's due but, in fact, each spin is completely random, much like every lottery draw."

Sourav Chatterjee, a Stanford mathematics professor specializing in probability, broke down the chances of a third local winner this way:

"A lottery is like a coin flip -- just because it happened twice before doesn't improve or hurt the chances it will happen a third time," Chatterjee said. "It's the same odds each time and past results don't change them."

And for lottery players across the country, the odds are very long of winning at all: Mega Million jackpots come in at about 1 in 259 million, with Powerball somewhat better at 1 in 175 million.

More than 91 million Powerball tickets were sold nationwide between Saturday's and Wednesday night's draws, with 333,000 tickets sold in San Jose and Milpitas alone, lottery officials said.

Given those figures, Chatterjee said, chances of a single mega-jackpot winner from either of those cities is about 1 in 275. The chances of it happening twice there was 1 in 75,000, Chatterjee said.

A third time? Try 1 in 20 million, he said.

Long odds for sure, but California Lottery officials encourage the concept of "lucky retailers," more prone to wins for whatever unscientific reasons, and list businesses that have sold the most winning tickets on the lottery website. That includes a record four million-dollar jackpot winners sold at Kavanagh's Liquors in San Lorenzo.

Elaine Fontilla of Milpitas believes. She often buys tickets from the winning gas station but didn't this time around. So Thursday she arrived at the store to try her hand at the next draw.

"There's probably more coming our way," she said. "It's not a superstition -- it just happens. It happened for someone else and next time I hope it happens to me."

Random or not, another Santa Clara County millionaire was created Wednesday night when the owner of the Chevron gas station in Milpitas received $1 million after selling the winning $425 million ticket.

Kulwinder Singh's store received its enormous fake check Thursday, but he didn't know about the win yet. Instead, he was en route to India and his son Parmeet Singh hadn't reached him to share the good news.

"I got a text from my uncle saying, 'Hey, your station is on the news,'" Singh said. "Then I got in my car and came over here, and all the news crews were here."

The store's previous biggest winner was the sale of a $10,000 Scratchers ticket from the California Lottery, Singh said.

Tammy Phan, 23, who lives near the Milpitas gas station, buys lottery tickets about once a month and was one of those who came Thursday.